


Sunset

by skeletonavenue



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-13
Updated: 2012-08-13
Packaged: 2017-11-12 02:07:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/485481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skeletonavenue/pseuds/skeletonavenue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Axel and Roxas have always loved the sunsets atop the tower together, and they begin to wonder if maybe they do have hearts after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunset

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a gift for my wonderful Amie and also in honor of AkuRoku day!

Sunsets were _always_ best viewed from the top of the clock tower, to Axel’s mind. The deep set oranges, the clouds looking like golden pillows, and the breeze alone meant that it was always his favourite time of day. He didn’t care for much more than a view atop the clockface, besides one other person in his life who was becoming an increasingly noticeable presence. Noticeable both by his own admission and also by subconscious deduction, too – the golden haired boy from his same Organization, the new, remarkably average kid with the keyblade.

Maybe the reason he was so fond of him was because of their hair colours making up his favourite time of day. Golden and flame red, right? That had to be the real meaning behind these feelings that Axel couldn’t quite place where his heart should be. It was just the colours.

 _For someone who didn’t have a heart_ , he thought, _he sure was conflicted_. And over feelings that were never supposed to exist in the first place.

The whole ordeal he was causing himself made his head hurt, and his skin feel a little tingly underneath the black clad of his robes.

“Man, what am I even doing…?”

He sat, swinging his legs with boots banging off the side of the clockface; head tilted backwards to look at the orange sky above him. Roxas would be there soon – but even then, Axel knew that his presence was hardly going to still his mind. He could have sworn that the right expression for this would have been to say that his icy heart was being slowly thawed out by Roxas.

But…that was impossible, right? How could someone like him ever ‘love’ when he didn’t have a heart to begin with?

He groaned, and rubbed at his temples through his gloved fingers.

“Augh, what _is_ this feeling?” He mumbled to himself with frustration. “It’s driving me nuts.”

“What’s driving you nuts? I’ve hardly had a chance to sit down yet.”

“Ah-!” Axel gasped slightly, before his golden eyes met with a familiar sight.

The familiar tones of a certain person in question were a little startling, but Axel was relieved to see the handsome blonde boy before him.

“Well, look who it is.” Axel replied teasingly, and Roxas blinked as he handed him an ice cream. “You always drive me nuts, here or not. It’s a miracle we’re even friends.”

“H-hey, no fair!”

Roxas laughed, and Axel smiled, skipped back a little mentally to go over his last sentence, and realized that it was very true in a different way that he just could not work out.

“Is there something bothering you?”

Axel paused. Was there? Or was it just his thoughts playing tricks on him again? Because this feeling of such a weight on his heart had made its presence known twice before.  
  
He remembered when these feelings started, anyway. Not long after he took Roxas on his first mission, and being forced into a state where he had to protect someone other than himself…sure, other team members worked together often, but that was for a purpose of getting the mission done.

It was almost as though Axel had moved in front of Roxas back then to protect him, not to protect the sanctity of the Organization and to achieve a mission.

“Hm…”

“Axel?”

Axel shook his head out of his daze of thoughts once more, and looked across at the sunset before him.

“Nah, it’s nothing…don’t worry about it.”

Roxas knew better than that, knew _him_ better than that, as he scanned Axel’s face over for his worried expression.

“You always keep things to yourself, don’t you?” the golden haired boy replied, as he shuffled himself down next to the redhead. “You know, you can always share your worries with me.”

“Well, what good would it do me to share it, right?” Axel replied, with a smirk. “We don’t have the hearts to comfort one another in the first place. And besides, I don’t really think I even know how to express it.”

Both boys sat in silence for a brief moment.

It _was_ true that they didn’t have hearts. They were fully aware of this - as far as things go, they truly were nobodies. They weren’t even supposed to exist. The fact that they did was a miracle in itself; the happy evenings spent atop the clock tower would one day surely end, and they weren’t even supposed to be able to form bonds close enough with one another to even miss it.

They weren’t even supposed to feel a thing.

“Hey, Axel…I’ve been wondering about something for a while now.”

This piqued his interest.

“Hm?” he asked, taking a bite of his ice cream. “What is it?”

Axel turned his gaze to meet Roxas’s incredibly serious expression; an expression that, even amidst Roxas’ usual stoicism, was unusual. He wondered if it was just one of those days for everyone in the Organization, if this kid was taking this seriously too.

“If we don’t have hearts,” Roxas begun, and took a poorly-timed bit of his ice cream. “Then…how come we can sit together, like this?”

Axel knew what Roxas was getting at, but let out a soft chuckle regardless.

“Not having a heart doesn’t mean you lose the use of your legs, you know.”

“Hey, you know what I mean!” Roxas replied, with a smirk. “It’s just…we’re always having it drilled into us that we can’t feel anything, that we’re not supposed to. But when I’m with you, I’m always happy. I’m…always happy to be at your side.”

Axel felt himself feel vaguely overwhelmed, as Roxas continued onwards.

“I dunno…I guess I always feel a little uneasy when I know you’ve gone off to fight bigger heartless and I’m not allowed to help. I don’t know the word for this feeling.”

“Attachment,” Axel suddenly blurted out, before he felt an irritating blush rising to his cheeks. He cleared his throat and took a bite of his ice cream, and looked slightly away from the boy at his side. “Or, uh, at least that’s what I’ve…got memorized.”

Roxas smiled, before breaking into a small, mischievous laugh, as Axel looked at him with confusion – and adoration.

“What’s so funny?”

“You. That ‘got it memorized’ thing is very you, right? It just makes me laugh.”

“Shut up,” Axel retorted with a laugh of his own, and sighed with guilty admission. “I worry about you too, though.”

“Good!” Roxas replied cheerfully, and Axel looked at him with an incredulous smirk.

“What do you mean, good?! You could hinder my battle performance, you know!”

Roxas laughed as he turned his gaze back towards the sun setting before him, and then back at Axel.

“I’m glad we can sit like this though,” he said quietly, “It’s my favourite time of day to see you and the sunset here.”

Axel looked at Roxas almost incredulously as he continued to gaze over the orange sky, and after a brief, silent pause, he felt both the instinct of wanting to kiss Roxas on the lips, but in almost subconscious motion, he felt himself lean over to Roxas and kiss him on the cheek.

Roxas didn’t move away, or act even surprised, for that matter. He acted almost as though he was expecting it, and Axel on the other hand could have sworn that he himself was about to burst into hot red flame like the sun before them both.

The lump of uncertainty stuck in his throat, like a plug preventing the words from tumbling out of his mouth to Roxas about how he didn’t know what came over him, how he was sorry for being so forward, but it seemed like perhaps Roxas was even silently glad that Axel had shown an extremely rare display of affection.

Neither one of them moved for at least an hour. The silence was, however, oddly not deafening; it didn’t feel pressured, or awkward from Axel maybe _finally_ realizing where his intentions with Roxas lay. Why he always felt like protecting him, why he always felt as though he wanted to be near him and why he missed him when he was gone. Not to mention the fact that, to Axel’s imagination, their hair colours only added to their compatibility.

Sunset, right?

“Axel…um…”

His attention was suddenly jolted as he turned to look at the boy besides him, bare ice cream stick in his hand, and staring at Axel’s own.

“What is it?”

“Your ice cream…it’s melted…”

He turned to look down at his hands, and saw that Roxas was right – the ice lolly was almost entirely disintegrated, but he was hardly surprised, given that he had lost himself in such thought.

The sky was purple now, and stars were dotting along it brightly off in the distance. It was beautiful, so beautiful in fact, but Axel’s first thought was shit, we missed curfew, which could have not been further from Roxas’s mind.

“Shall we head back?”

“Wait a second.”

Axel was surprised by the ordering tone of Roxas’s voice, to say the least – but he was even more surprised by the fact that he felt Roxas pressing his nose against his cheek, and more importantly, his lips against Axel’s, with his eyes squeezed shut from nerves and ‘is this going to work’ attitude.

It was a little rough, and misplaced, at first – Roxas was more kissing Axel’s chin and bottom lip than fully on the lips – before he opened his eyes, and the two of them not more than a few centimetres apart, before Axel finally worked up the courage to do what Roxas had done for him, and this time, a full kiss was reciprocated.

Roxas was so soft to kiss, and it felt so good, Axel thought. He tasted like sea salt ice cream, which could only have been a good thing. And this time, he didn’t have time to worry about why he was feeling so involved with the new boy, why his cheeks were blushing so hard he thought he might spontaneously combust, or why his head was spinning so fast he felt as though he was dizzy from fatigue already.

But he knew, with every movement of his lips against Roxas’s, that he loved him. It was undeniable to both of them how they felt. Either the two of them really did have hearts after all, to be able to feel something of such magnitude burning so brightly inside them, or maybe it was the beginning of a love that was so big, so strong, that it even transcended the fact that they didn’t have hearts. Axel knew that the former would have been a much better option, but he oddly hoped it was the latter.

He knew that it wasn’t the right time to make such a large confession, however – and besides, everything that needed to be said had been done so within the movements of their lips against one another.

The kiss came to a slow end, and for two boys as inexperienced with romance as themselves, things had gone rather smoothly.

Axel was the first to grin, as Roxas didn’t quite want to move the tip of his nose away from the redhead’s before him, and looked at him with a pleading expression of _please, Axel, be the first to speak_.

“Well that was interesting.”

Roxas blinked from the anti-climatic response, and laughed.

“I guess that’s one way to put it.” He stated bluntly, before his expression darkened. “But, Axel…what’re we gonna do?”

“Hm? What do you mean?”

“About these…well, these feelings…they aren’t normal for people like us, right?”

Axel frowned as the harsh reality of their situation took no time to settle right back in, and he sighed heavily, placing one hand on Roxas’s own on the wall that they sat on.

“We’ll figure it out,” he said softly, and smiled. “We’ll figure it out…together.”

 

 


End file.
